


poor unfortunate soul

by RainPhee



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Eventual Happy Ending, Heavy Angst, M/M, McCree Fuckin Suffers, OC (Original Cat) - Freeform, Oneshot, hanahaki, mccree has a pet cat named tumbleweed youll love her, mccree is gay and hanzo is oblivious, mention of blood and vomiting quite frequently so watch out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-14 04:54:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11775930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainPhee/pseuds/RainPhee
Summary: No one ever died of a broken heart, surely. Jesse McCree doesn't believe in that kind of stuff, and even if he did, he never thought it could have possibly happened to him.But when the flowers start growing, well, there's no denying the truth.





	poor unfortunate soul

When had they started growing?

He didn’t know. Things like this took time, a slow burn of muddled feelings and physical symptoms and the slow, slow expand of multiplying cells. His lungs were pretty shot anyway, from years of smoking cigarillos, so it was no wonder that he didn’t notice it sooner. The cowboy was used to pain in his chest, it was normal now. Whether that was good or not didn’t bother him.

The first petal appeared at approximately two eighteen am, on a Friday night, three days after the last mission. He woke up with a start, heart pounding as he felt something sticking to the walls of his throat, thrashing frantically to heave himself off the bed. The cat who had been sleeping curled next to his head jolted upright with a start and hissed at him, miffed at being so rudely awoken, but he paid her no heed, stumbling into the bathroom and retching into the sink.

The thing finally, _finally_ flew out of his mouth and landed in the sink, and he wiped his lips of the spittle, finally able to reach over and flick the lights on. The faint buzzing of fluorescent lighting filled the air as the gunslinger inspected the object that had been caught in his windpipe.

A petal. A single, narrow petal, pointed on one end like an arrowhead and slick with his spit. It was blue, but darkened to an ebony black at the point, the two colors fading into each other in a delicate gradient. McCree stared at the offending petal for a good minute, maybe two, before reaching over to turn the faucet on and watch it slide down the drain.

He didn’t remember eating any kind of flower like that, or being anywhere with that kind of plant. Why would it have been stuck in his throat like that, and so late at night? He stared at the shining faucet for a while, losing track of himself as his mind whirred on autopilot, only to snap out of it when he felt something soft and faintly purring brush his ankle.

He looked down at Tumbleweed, who stared back, mewing softly in apology for hissing earlier. The cowboy sighed, looked back at himself in the mirror. He looked worn, tired. His arm shone in the stark lighting.

He scooped the cat up and took them both back to bed.

* * *

Things only got worse from there. He’d wake up at all hours of the night to cough disgusting clumps of the petals out into the sink, each one that same two-toned, sharp-ended kind. He even started hacking them up during the day, too, stopping in his path to discreetly (or, at least, as discreetly as he possibly could) cough into a tissue. Tumbleweed was worried sick, she wouldn’t leave his side for love nor money now, not that she would before. Much to McCree’s relief, the team all seemed to think he had a cold. He didn’t need to worry them with his weird petal disease, whatever it was.

He finally gave up and googled the damn thing one night after a particularly intense round of coughing. _Hanahaki_ , the results said, bright on the screen in his dark room. He rubbed his tired eyes and scanned the symptoms, the causes.

 _A disease caused by unrequited love._ That was bullshit. He didn't have his eye on anyone right now, why was he hacking up petals like a cat with hairballs? There were surprisingly few treatments for it as well, or information whatsoever. It was just his luck to catch a rare plant disease for a fake reason, wasn't it. Fucking fantastic.

It wasn’t bullshit at all, McCree discovered not long after.

He had pretty good relations with most of the people on base, mostly because something about Jesse McCree was innately charming. He simply got along well with others, that was all; it wasn’t any kind of magic. But one of the people he hadn't expected to have that sort of relationship with was Hanzo Shimada.

He got along with his brother like a house on fire, after all- but Hanzo was an entirely different can of worms that no one really wanted to crack open. He was more stoic, he said things in a harsh voice and rarely if ever showed much emotion spare for outward gritty grumpiness. But much to McCree’s surprise, he and the elder Shimada actually got along.... great. Pretty damn great, all things considered.

The two somehow felt at ease around each other, enough for even Hanzo to break his stony shell and smile every once in a while. Going near him made McCree instantly feel balanced, like something had been returned to the right place at the right time. They could talk for hours or even just sit in each others’ presence, enjoying whatever it was that connected the two of them with an invisible thread.

Despite all of that, McCree hadn't expected him to actually notice anything about his condition. He thought Hanzo didn’t care about him that much, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. So when McCree was sitting in the common room, wrapped up with his serape up to his nose, the archer took him completely by surprise.

“McCree,” he said as slid into the seat across from him. McCree nodded, acknowledging his presence but declining to speak as his throat was raw.

They sat in silence for a while before Hanzo breached the topic. “McCree, are you... all right?”

“Hm?” McCree grunted, now roused into speaking once more. “What’dya mean, darlin’?”

“You seem to... have fallen under the weather recently.” Hanzo stirred his drink absentmindedly, watching the hypnotic movement of the spoon. “You have been coughing a lot. I was just worried, and hoped that you were all right.”

McCree’s cheeks heated up, and he had no idea why. Hanzo was worried about him? That didn't seem very much like him...

“Yeh, I’m jes’ fine, honey. Been comin’ down with a cold recently, that's all. No need ta worry ‘bout me.”

Hanzo narrowed his eyes, inspecting him from beneath his lashes. “You are sure of this?”

“Sure as sunshine, darlin’.”

Hanzo’s mouth quirked into a light smile at the ends, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I never did understand those sayings of yours, cowboy.” He took a sip from his mug, then nodded once, sharply. “All right. I will leave you to your cold, then.”

McCree watched, spellbound, as he left, placing his unneeded spoon next to the break room sink and turning to go. Moments before he stepped out, Hanzo turned his head just slightly, looking back at him.

“Ah, McCree?”

McCree was amazed that his mouth worked enough for him to mumble a noise of acknowledgment. “Mm?”

“Get well soon. I miss seeing you out and about.”

The door barely closed shut behind him before the cowboy jolted out of his seat, stumbling to lean over the sink and frantically cough petal after petal into the aluminum basin. They strangled his windpipe, scratching and scraping, and for one terrifying moment Jesse was convinced that he was about to die.

Finally, the last clump slid down in a gelatinous blob of spittle tinged red with blood, and McCree took a deep, stuttering breath. The air was unexpectedly cool after being deprived of it for so long, and he took gulps of it, the haze over his vision clearing and his heart pounding in his throat.

He looked at the petals, the black-tipped horrible things that had been torturing him, smeared with red and the sheen of phlegm, and he finally understood.

_Hanzo._

* * *

Things only got worse from there. Of course they did.

Now that he had realized the source of his attraction, the source of the pain, his heart ached every time he barely thought about the other man. McCree berated himself, staring in the mirror. No one had died of a broken heart. He was above such things- he was a grown man! He wasn’t a schoolboy pining over a faraway crush, and this wasn’t anything serious. He would get over it, and it would all be fine.

Invetiably, he then was forced to wretch into the sink, and the copper tang of blood came up with the petals. Each one represented a cold, hard little statement, one that felt like knife wounds:

_He doesn’t love you back._

_He doesn’t love you back._

_He doesn’t love you-_

McCree stopped smoking, and sought respite in the glass bottom of whiskey bottles and empty canisters of bourbon. His speech, which pained him with every flex of muscles, slowed and stopped completely, and the only sounds he could muster were strangled half-groans. He barely slept, forced awake every half-hour by the clods of horrible plant matter in his throat.

It was hell.

He stopped trying to hide it, at least the feeling shitty part. The team cast him worried glances every time he emerged from his room, ragged and listless, having not showered in three days. Missions stopped completely, at least for him. Tumbleweed, his ever-vigilant best friend, hovered like a furry shadow wherever he went, run ragged herself with worry. It was only a matter of time before someone confronted him about it.

Most of the team ran circles around him rather than address the issue. Lena was flighty- well, even more flighty than usual, which was saying something. Jack and Winston seemed to actively avoid him, and Lúcio and Hana simply quieted whenever he came near. The only ones who were more open about their concerns were the Shimada brothers, and even his friend Genji wasn’t that specific on his fears.

Hanzo just stared at him with deep-seated worry in his eyes, and every time he saw it, McCree felt like his stomach was going to flip over completely.

What with the rest of the team acting chickenshit around him, he should have expected what came next. One morning, when he was lying in bed, the pain having robbed him of any and all coherent thought or feeling, the door slid open.

“Hhgh?” he groaned at the unexpected light that fell on his face, weakly raising one hand to shield his eyes. Tumbleweed dug her claws into the pillow, but did not move. “Wwhhis-”

It was Angela, good old doctor Angela, and McCree didn’t know why he expected any different. Of course Angie would be the one to notice that he was sick, she was the doctor after all, and she was never one to be unobservant. None of them were. In their line of work, noticing something a second too late was liable to get you killed.

She stared at him now with a look McCree had seen before and he didn’t like being turned on him now. It was the same look she got when she had to take up her scalpel and dig through the ruined remains of something that had once been human.

“Jesse,” she began, in a low warning tone, “what the hell is wrong with you.”

“Cold,” he managed to choke out through the pain, and Angela immediately shook her head. That excuse wouldn’t fool her for a second.

“If it was just a cold, it would be over by now. You’ve been sick for months, and something tells me you know what it is. Don’t lie to me, it’ll just make things harder.”

He was about to attempt to respond to her, to come up with some lie that he tore through the ragged scraps of his throat, but something else came up instead. The flowers tore at him again, making him choke on the uprising of spittle and plant matter, and he hauled himself up, pushed her to the side and upchucked a mass of the stuff onto his bathroom floor. McCree felt unexpectedly ashamed as he looked at it, and alarmed at how much of it was bloodied.

When he turned, Angela was staring with wide, horrified eyes, and they were full of pity. In the pain-tortured annals of his mind, he rebelled at that. He didn’t want her pity. He didn’t want anyone’s pity. There was only one thing he really wanted now, and he knew that he could never get it.

“Hanahaki,” she murmured, aghast. Jesse offered a weak smile. “god, Jesse, why wouldn’t you tell me?”

He couldn’t bring himself to speak. It hurt too much, and the look in her eyes made him want to squirm away back to his dirty bed and die.

They stayed silent for a while, and Jesse felt something brush his ankle, meowing softly. Tumbleweed had matted fur now, and he felt a sting of embarrassment and shame at the feeling. He hadn’t been taking care of her. His cat was the last creature that possibly deserved to suffer for this bullshit disease, and here they were anyway. He wanted to hit himself.

“It’s Hanzo, isn’t it,” she whispered after this long, thoughtful silence, and the accuracy of her judgement made McCree sputter and cough another disgusting blob on the floor.

“Wh-” he began before more coughing forced him over and blood dripped from his lips, smearing red on his chin. He wiped it away with his wrist and finally looked at her properly, then instantly regretted doing so. Angela’s eyes burned, full of concern and pity and alarum at the crimson on his face, and he wanted her to leave.

“I’ve seen how you look at him,” she toned, still barely loud enough for him to hear. “It’s hanahaki, so he doesn’t- god, Jesse, I’m so sorry...”

And he lost it. McCree fucking lost it. He was in so much pain and his breaths rattled in his chest and everything hurt so much, all the time, and over that was the horrible ache in his chest that told him that he was unlovable, that he would never be what he wanted to be, never feel what he wanted to feel- everything hurt so much and he wanted it to stop.

Jesse had done some horrible things in his lifetime, and sometimes in darker moments he convinced himself that this was his punishment. He had taken lives and this was the price. But now his composure had broken, and feelings were spilling through the cracks between the pain. He would do anything, _anything_ , just to make it all stop, and tears trailed hot and wet down his cheeks as he bit his lip to prevent them. He tasted copper between his teeth, and the tears just came down harder.

And through the haze of tears and blood and pain, he managed to strangle out, just barely:

“Help me.”

“I can’t.” She spread her hands, looking helpless. “There’s no real cure for hanahaki, other than the obvious one. I guess I could try and attempt some kind of operation to get it out, but it’s risky at best, so I’m hesi-”

“Do it.” he croaked.

Steel met him when he matched their gazes, and McCree quailed underneath it. Angela had always been this way, calculating everything faster than you could comprehend and acting upon what she considered the best choice. She was the same way with her robotics, looping strings of code together in a way that no one but herself could understand. It made Jesse uneasy to think that he was no better than his bionic arm.

“Tell Hanzo,” she replied, cooly. “I won’t do anything unless you tell him.”

Jesse choked again, and he could feel a petal on his lips. “N-no. Can’t-”

“Yes you goddamn well can,” she snarled with an unexpected amount of venom. “There’s so many things that could go wrong with the surgery here... No, you have to tell him. Don’t be stupid.”

“Bu-”

“There is a small chance that Hanzo might return your affection, and that he just hasn’t realized it yet. If so, you’ll be cured, and will most likely never have to deal with this shit again. It’s been known to happen before. Please, Jesse. I don’t want to take any risks if I don’t have to.”

“Fuck.” That was all he could say right now, the only word willing to scrape itself out of his destroyed throat. She was right. Of course she was right. And yet, and yet, his heart still ached, reminding him how unlovable-

“He doesn’t hate you,” Angela murmured, her voice soothing. “He definitely doesn’t hate you. You’re one of his best friends, I think, and I doubt he would ruin your relationship just because he doesn’t return romantic feelings. The surgery is risky, but if this plan doesn’t work, then I will do the best I possibly can to remove it. You have to try.”

“Fuck,” he repeated, balling his hands into fists, but something in him was determined. He didn’t hate him, and Angela was the best in the world. Things would be all right. He would be cured, and he would breathe again. Hope- the tiniest speck of it, but still hope- had landed in his heart, and it gave him a sliver of courage.

Before he lost his nerve, he nodded.

He would do it.

* * *

It took him a long time to find him, longer than it should have. Angela had watched him go, serape bundled up to his nose and tailed closely by the dark form that was Tumbleweed. Sometimes, Jesse just missed him, arriving moments after Hanzo left. But sometimes he would see him, and the sight would have his heart pounding and his throat throbbing with pain, and his composure would falter, leaving him to squat down and run his fingers anxiously along his cat’s spine as he attempted to hold back the coughing.

But some things couldn’t be avoided. This was one of them. Jesse knew that it would happen sooner or later, and finally, what he had been seeking sought him out instead.

He was standing outside on the balcony, gripping the metal bars with his hands so tightly that the knuckles of his flesh one went white. Cool air soothed his throat somewhat, and it cleared his head in the process, at least a little. The doubts began to swirl back in, dark and heavy, and he debated returning to his room and getting absolutely shitfaced rather than continuing this quest. After all, what were the chances that he would succeed? Miniscule, to be sure...

Tumbleweed gave a happy mew-chirp and darted from his heels, twining around someone else’s. Jesse heard a few murmured coos in Japanese, and his shoulders tensed. He wondered, for a moment, if jumping from the balcony down the cliff below was a viable option here, but he knew it wasn’t.

He knew who it was before he turned around, but he did anyway, swiveling on his heel to be greeted by the crossed arms and angry glare of Hanzo Shimada. Tumbleweed rubbed herself affectionately on his legs, and McCree momentarily wanted to call her a damned traitor for betraying his trust like this.

Something inside him melted, at Hanzo’s beautiful eyes, turned in a glare upon him. He wanted to smack himself for it.

“Jesse,” Hanzo began, and he knew that this encounter was unique. He’d only ever uttered McCree’s first name once before, in Egypt, on a mission that had gone horribly wrong. He still remembered the scream, the desperation in his voice, the panic that Hanzo was about to lose him. He hadn’t, and Jesse recalled the way he had berated him when they finally got back to base.

“ _Do not scare me like that again, gunslinger!_ ” he had scolded, hands on his hips. “ _I thought I would have to see you in bits and pieces from then on._ ”

God, he was well and truly fucked with this man, wasn’t he?

“You are still unwell, I see. And it must be very bad, because your cat has been coming to me for food.” No wonder she was so affectionate. “I know only the worst of illnesses would prevent you from attending to her. What is wrong? And why have you been avoiding me?”

“I have something to say,” Jesse rasped, and Hanzo’s eyes widened.

“You sound terrible.” He grabbed McCree’s hand, the metal one, and he could practically feel the heat burning on his cheeks. “Do not try to speak, it will just hurt you. Have you been to Angela?”

“Hhg- stop-” McCree pulled out of Hanzo’s grip sharply, and regretted it instantly as he saw the hurt look on the man’s face. Hanzo crossed his arms again, looking injured, and his tone changed too.

“Well? What is it? Say it quickly, or you may make yourself sicker.”

“See, I...” Words failed him. Of course they did. Nothing in his life could ever be easy, could it? Only a few short words- only three little words, and he had a chance of freedom from his suffering. And yet they were the only ones he couldn’t muster the courage to tear from his shredded vocal cords.

Hanzo’s body was mad, but the look in his eyes... he looked more _disappointed_ than anything else. Regretful. “If you need time to collect yourself, I can leave.”

“Don’t-” He can tell that Hanzo is getting upset, that he thinks he’s mocking him. He doesn’t want him to go. He wants him to stay, forever, and the desperation rises up from his heart to his mouth and finally, finally, he says it:

“ _I love you._ ”

It hurts, it hurts, his throat hurts and his heart hurts, and he leans over to cough into his palm. He can’t tell if the tang of blood in his mouth is old or new, and his eyes go white and blank. Everything is _wrong_. He fucked up and now everything was wrong forever, he would never be able to look at Hanzo again, it was wrong and bad and horrible and he wanted to _die_ -

“Jesse,” came a soft voice.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, in an unexpected moment of easy breathing. “Hanzo, I’m so sorry, I-”

There was a hand guiding his chin, and he looked into his eyes.

“ _Don’t be,_ ” Hanzo murmured, and the press of his lips was the sweetest thing Jesse had ever tasted.

And they broke, and for the first time in months, Jesse took a long, deep breath.

**Author's Note:**

> bbbbbttttttttt thats finally done. this was done out of boredom but i ended up liking it and hell, why not show it off?? 
> 
> you can contact me at rainphee on tumblr, if ya want to. hope you enjoyed!
> 
> EDIT 28/8/17: fixed those damn seperator thingies


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